December 22, 2009

Netbook Tips

I have been using an Asus EEE PC 900 netbook for about a year. It is really convenient when I go on travel since it is so small but is fully functional for everyday tasks such as web surfing and email. My biggest gripe has been the lack of real estate on the screen due to the limited resolution (1024x800). Running Firefox has been especially painful since the misc. bars on the screen take up so much room.

Then I discovered prism. It allows you to run a webapp such as Gmail in a dedicated window, even as a new process. If Firefox crashes, your webapp will still be running. I could not really think of a reason why I wanted this until I ran it on my netbook. Now I have full utilization of the screen, allowing me to see more of my app.

Even Facebook is much more usable like this.

I also like the icons used in the task bar which makes it easier to find app instead of them all looking like Firefox. Prism is a great solution if you have a small screen or you just want to treat a web app as a real application.